OfficeDepot

• Office Depot has been working with the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) to certify its entire paper supply is “sustainable”. However well intentioned this move may be, it reflects a profound misunderstanding of negative impact the FSC has on communities dependent on forestry, and the businesses that have contributed to development as well as conservation.
• The Dogwood Alliance, having successfully pressured Staples in 2002, set its sights on Office Depot, pressuring the company to “meet or exceed” the commitments made by Staples. Despite the unnecessary campaign against Staples, the Dogwood Alliance and its partners were seeking to expand their control over the retail paper industry, further limiting the capability for having a constructive, substantive dialogue on sustainability.
• By capitulating to pressure from Green NGOs, Office Depot is an equal partner in the effort to subject developing nations to scurrilous environmental complaints and depriving the poor of the means to become equal partners in the global market.
• Office Depot’s environmental policy subjects industry in developing industry to onerous limitations on their productivity. By limiting the ability for these industries to expand within the confines established by sovereign governments, Officemax is seeking to co-opt domestic policy, a tactic long used by many of the most egregious purveyors of environmental dictatorships.
• By capitulating, Office Depot has put Green NGOs goals and ambitions ahead of those of the world’s poor and hungry, the US economy, and their shareholders. They have now shown to Greenpeace, WWF, and their partners that they alone control the industry, and will ‘greenmail’ anyone who does not give in to theirdemands.

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